Some of you may have read the ‘80's cult classic book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  It is the story of two young men who strike out across the country on motorcycles in search of the meaning of life.  One rides a Harley with which he is intimately familiar because Harley's at the time required that.  They leaked oil, often broke down and unless you were close to a mechanic and had lots of cash, becoming your own mechanic was a requirement to maintain the journey.  The other young man rode a brand new Japanese bike known for its reliability, hence requiring little or no mechanical knowledge.  The bikes became a metaphor for the effects of modernization and technological advance upon man.  The owner of the Japanese bike was pictured as at the effect of his bike, not in control of his journey and hence his life.  When his bike broke down, his journey was at an end, and he was without means to get it restarted. The book's message:  man has created machines that now rule him as he is incapable of fixing or even operating them himself.  Instead of machines and technology advancing man, man has become dependent and thus disempowered by the machines he has created.